This invention relates to the use of a treatment composition to enhance skin health. The treatment composition includes a surfactant and a sacrificial substrate that can be applied to a sheet material such as a nonwoven web, such that the composition will impart adequate fluid handling properties to the sheet material and will subsequently be transferred to the skin. The treatment composition may further be used as a vehicle to deliver active agents to the skin.
The skin is naturally an excellent barrier to the penetration of many foreign substances. From time-to-time, the natural ability of the skin to protect is compromised by external factors including abrasions, irritants and the like. Attempts have been made in recent years to promote skin health through the use of creams, lotions and fiber products containing additives in order to maintain the skin health. Effective delivery of compositions via fiber products that can enhance or prevent damage to the underlying protective barrier of skin is not yet known.
Enhancing skin health has many advantages including: 1) protecting the skin and maintaining the skin in a moist state, essentially free from chapping or irritation, 2) pH buffering and barrier enhancement to maintain or enhance such base properties of skin, 3) inhibition of irritants that are suspected to promote irritant or allergic contact dermatitis, and 4) maintaining the lubricity of skin.
The permeability of the skin to a foreign substance is influenced by a combination of physico-chemical parameters for both the object and the vehicle, if applicable, that delivers the object. Maintaining health of the skin and its underlying barrier properties requires optimal physico-chemical properties of the skin.
When skin is attacked by proteases, the stratum corneum layer of the skin is compromised and the skin subsequently becomes inflamed. There are currently several known lotions and creams available that treat inflammation once it has occurred. To the user, however, discomfort has already been transpired because of the inflammation. A need still exists for a method and combination of preventing skin irritation rather than treating it.
There is a need for a treatment combination for use with a sheet material that is capable of delivering a thin, tenacious, substantially continuous film of the sacrificial substrate to the skin that can prevent or reduce skin irritation, maintain pH, and maintain skin hydration and lubrication. The combination of the instant invention fulfills this need. Additionally, while skin wellness additives are known, other compositions have had the undesired side effect of reducing wettability, or the fluid intake rate, of the sheet material. There remains a need for a treatment composition for application and use with a sheet material that will not adversely affect fluid properties of the sheet material, e.g. fast and sustainable fluid intake rate.
The present invention relates to a topical delivery system effective in depositing a thin, tenacious and substantially continuous coating of a sacrificial substrate, e.g. protein or protein hydrolysate, on skin by an aqueous emulsion mediated dissolution of the sacrificial substrate from a sheet material with subsequent transfer and deposition onto the skin. Coatings of the sacrificial substrate on skin resist removal, thereby providing a protective barrier against chemically- and biochemically-induced skin damage. The treatment combination also provides a vehicle for administering an effective dose of a active agent to the skin surface.